Car giant Jaguar Land Rover is to more than double the size of its base in Coventry in a massive expansion of its advanced engineering and design centre.

JLR is to announce it has completed an estimated £20million deal for 62 acres of land at Whitley – more than doubling its current 55-acre footprint at the site, which also houses its global headquarters.

The firm currently employs 5,200 people at Whitley and sources close to the deal are confident the expansion could lead to up to 4,000 extra jobs, although the company has officially denied this while also failing to put a figure on the potential number of new jobs.

There are also hopes the huge expansion could create an estimated 7,000 to 11,000 jobs indirectly in the region.

It is understood the move will turn Coventry into the global ‘brains’ of the company – with all research and development taking place in the city and all of JLR’s prototypes being built at Whitley.

The Telegraph can reveal the plans after months of behind the scenes negotiations between Coventry City Council officials and top bosses at Jaguar Land Rover resulted in the land deal with business park owners St Modwen.

With negotiations reaching a key stage in recent weeks, the council’s top planning officer – Martin Yardley – stayed behind to help complete the deal while other council officials travelled to the MIPIM property conference in France.

It is understood Labour council leader Ann Lucas and deputy Phil Townshend have also been actively involved in the talks which started around six months ago.

Ralph Speth, chief executive of JLR, led on the negotiations for the car makers along with Adrian Hallmark, JLR’s group strategy director.

Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya, chairman of Warwick Manufacturing Group and one of the men behind Tata’s takeover of JLR, is also understood to have played a key role in bringing the parties together using his connections with the city and the motoring giants.

The JLR announcement is the latest boost to Coventry after Chinese firm Geely was given permission to build a £150million London Taxi Company factory on the outskirts of Coventry in Ansty Park last month.

That factory would act as the firm’s headquarters and is expected to employ about 1,000 people. It would also be a state-of-the-art facility for research, development and assembly of high technology electric vehicles, including the next generation of London taxi.